Currently

I'm linking up with Farley at Oh' Boy Fourth Grade for the Currently.

Listening

Good Luck Charlie on Disney. I think Amy, the mom, is hilarious! I actually love the show thanks to my girls!

Loving

I love that TpT is going to start paying out monthly. I'm definitely not a huge seller, but every little bit helps. 

Thinking

I have decided to start grad school this summer. 

Wanting

Anyone who reads my blog knows that my husband and I both commute an hour to work and an hour home. I've been doing it for three years, and he's been doing it for several months. Our home is for sale, but we haven't had any luck selling it. :(

Needing

I'm coo-coo crazy! I registered for two grad classes in the college I graduated from. However, after really thinking about how it was going to work out, I have decided that I need to take online classes. 

1. I don't want anyone to have to give up their summer to help watch my children. 

2. I don't want to have to commute 600 miles 4 days out of the week. 

3. I don't want to sit in a chair for several hours 4 days a week. 

4. I want to be able to do my school work in the comfort of my jammies. 

5. Even of I did all of the above for the summer semester, I wouldn't have anyone to help with my kids for the fall semester. 

Therefore, I have to drop those two classes I registered for, and fill out all the info for the online college. Yep! I acted before thinking it through! It happens! At $477 per semester hour, I'm definitely going to need that monthly TpT payout! Ha!

Summer Bucket List

It's pretty simple. I want to enjoy my husband and my children. It seems like we never slow down enough to truly enjoy each other. We can do this at the beach! Probably just a couple of day trips since rooms are outrageous during the summer months. I want to also get my first online grad class completed successfully! :)

I know many of you have already linked up. If you haven't, you should. I love getting to read what everyone is up to each month. 

Remember the rule of three! 

Happy Sunday, Seed Plantings, Instagram Fun Linky, and a Clip Art Sale Worth Checking Out

Sunday is here. That means tomorrow is Monday. The school year is winding down quickly. We have 20 school days left. Only 19 of those are with children. Among those days, we still have award ceremonies, a talent show presentation, a field trip, and field day. Plus, the "big kids" have testing the second week of May. As a teacher, I just have to make sure my kids aren't running and hollering in the halls. My students wouldn't do that anyway! :) As a mom, I have a 7th and 3rd grader who will have to test. I really feel bad for them. Testing is stressful!

Last Thursday, my class planted Spelt Grass Seeds. I gave them a cup to draw a face. The seeds will grow to look like "hair". I hope they have sprouted by tomorrow. We need something to take our minds off the tadpole incident. I would also like to plant our Lima Bean Seeds next week. I've done that every year, so I surely can't skip it this year. It will add to our already full days. 

What the Teacher Wants and Apples and ABC's will host an
 Instagram Linky every Tuesday. Fun! 

Linky rules:

link up with a blog post,

 sharing this image 

link back to this linky party

  your user name

 and a couple of your favorite Instagram photos!  

(don't just link up to your instagram account)  ;)

You can follow me @dawnmkey

A few of my favorite photos:

 Crazy sock day during Read Across America Week

Read Across America Week with my girls

 Ocean Adventures

Frog Fun

Now, about that clip art sale that is definitely worth checking out. Sonya DeHart is having a $1 sale on her website. She is super talented! Click on the picture to go to her website and do a little shopping. 

Frog Fun

Hey peeps! Are you all as sleepy as I am? Man, I'm feeling drained! It has been a very busy week. I have a feeling the next four weeks are going to be just as busy! There are so many fun things that happen at the end of the year. I can't wait for our field trip and field day. Yeah!

A few posts ago, I talked about how I took tadpoles to my classroom, so we could watch them grow into frogs. Then, I talked about how they all died. So sad! Well, I went ahead and finished teaching about frogs. 

We started our learning with the famous KWL Chart. I think my little kiddos had a few great questions. We were supposed to fill out the 'L' part today, but I took the day off to go on a field trip with my 3rd grade daughter. That will have to be done next week. 

We also filled out a Frogs: Can-Have-Are Chart. I don't make the neatest anchor charts, but they work for our learning. :) The big books below are a couple of the books I inherited when I moved into my classroom. We read those, and they have some really great pictures in them. Kids love the nonfiction text! There were a lot of Oohhhs, Ahhhs and even some Eewwws over the pictures!

After reading and talking about frogs, you know writing comes next. All of my students are on different writing levels, but I am so proud of how far they've all come. Some of my children weren't able to write one word in their journals on their own at the beginning of the year. Now, my babes can write paragraphs. We may still be working on how to start a sentence with some of them, but there is SO much improvement. Some of my others can write an entire page and stay on topic. 

This is my example of the little frog craft. It is quite simple to put together. I showed my kids that you can make paper and ribbon curl by using their scissors. They thought that was the coolest thing.  

Everything here along with so much more is included in Frogs~A fun Science Unit for little learners. 

Click the links to check it out. 
Teachers pay Teachers
Teachers Notebook

Are you following me on Facebook? 

Ocean Adventure Paintings with a freebie

This has been a long week. My kiddos have been great all year long. Almost all of them have an A in conduct. They're just that sweet. For some reason, they've gone a little coo-coo the past two days. I think they have spring fever. Well, I sprang it on them that we have 5 weeks left of learning! ha 
On top of them being a little coo-coo this week, ALL 10 of our tadpoles died. The kids and I left school on Tuesday, and they were all alive and swimming just fine. We came in Wednesday morning, and ALL 10 were dead. I don't know what happened. FAIL :( It happens...right? 
As if that wasn't enough for the week, when we got home yesterday, we realized that everything in our large stand-up freezer was defrosted. We were able to save a few things, but a lot had to be thrown out. Needless to say, I went to bed at the same time the kids did last night. 

On to better news...
Can I tell you how much I love doing this ocean painting and writing activity? This is the second year I've done it, and it is fabulous. The kids loved it!! After talking about oceans and ocean animals for several days, I had my kids draw ocean animals on a long piece of construction paper that was been folded in half. They drew their pictures with a pencil and then colored them in very very dark with their crayons. Some colored so hard that their crayons broke...oops! Once they were colored in, I had them paint over the ocean scene with watered-down blue paint. Then I had them complete a descriptive writing about their ocean adventure. Once their writing was done, they glued it to the top half of the long construction paper. 

I love how they all turned out so pretty! The darker they color, the more vibrant they turn out. 

You can snag the Ocean Adventure paper for free by clicking on the picture if you'd like to do this activity with your class. 

Tracin' and Eatin' 3D Shapes

Wowzers! We've been so busy in first grade. Of course, I know you all have been. It's crunch time to be sure these babies are ready for second grade. Right now, my biggest fear is that they aren't ready. We've learned so much, but there's so much left to learn/review in these last few weeks. 

We have been working with 3-D shapes. Here, my kiddos are working on building and repeating their shapes. My trick to help them remember that once they built the shapes, they couldn't come apart was to sing "Stuck Like Glue". I'm thankful they don't remind me how horrible my singing is. 

 To make things fun, I headed to the Dollar Tree. You know, that place teachers can afford to shop at. I searched for 3-D shaped snacks. Then, I headed home to make new sheets to match the snacks I was able to find. This was a hit, and I only spent $6 on the candy! That's a win-win in my book!

You can click either picture to snag a free copy if you're able to use it. If so, I hope you enjoy! 

Before I go, I want to direct you to a great giveaway. Kelly from First Grade Fairytale is having her fabulous 400 follower giveaway. 

 

Ouch! We wore band-aids all day!

Last week and this week, we have been working on the /ow/ as in cow and /ou/ as in ouch sounds. Fun...huh? Yes, I think so! 

This morning, I got out some band-aids and wrote 'ou' on all of them.  Since we focused on the /ow/ sound last week and quickly talked about the /ou/ sound, my kiddos knew exactly what to expect today, and they read the /ou/ words like super stars! Wearing the band-aids were just a fun little touch to our learing. 

Can I say that the Color Run was Fan-tas-tic!!!! It was so much fun. Partly because I was in great company.

This was me before. I'm all nice and clean!

 This is me after. I was very colorful! Can you see the excitement on my face?!!

 This is my best teacher friend. She's the one who talked me into doing the Color Run! I'm so glad I let her talk me into it. 

This is the whole group of "Dashing Darling's".

The colorful socks made it even better. My best teacher friend and I have on the wild zebra socks. 

We definitely want to do it again!

There are some amazing giveaways going on by some of the sweetest bloggers I've "met". Click on the pictures to check each one out.